Rendezvous (5 page)

“That’s Bilby Island. We’ve passed into Bandicoot Cove. Not on my standard tour, but I thought you’d like to see it.”

“It’s beautiful.”

She
was beautiful, beyond breathtaking, in the creeping twilight. Her hair was gilded by the slanted sun, her profile etched in delicate lines as she stared out at the island. That sense of impending loss clawed at Reed again and his throat completely shut down.

Fortunately, Cassie continued speaking so she didn’t notice his inability to. “There are a lot of stories about this place. Some locals say it’s got magical properties. That visitors to the island are cast under a kind of romantic spell, and that once a person is under that spell they are destined to find their true love.”

It was a struggle to swallow, to speak, but Reed forced himself to do it. He had to ask the question. “What do you think?”

She turned to him and offered a slanted smile. “I think it’s a great yarn to tell the tourists. But I also know a lot of people who’ve visited Bilby Island as singles have left as couples. That much is true.”

“Can we go?”

She tilted her head, assessing him so soberly Reed wondered if his request had come out sounding desperate. He was a man who believed in facts and evidence, but the minute Cassie had mentioned the possibility of a romantic spell, Reed knew that’s what he needed if he was going to salvage anything from this trip.

To bring Cassie back to him, he needed nothing short of magic.

Reed waited, body tense, while Cassie considered his request. At long last, she conceded. “All right. I’ll get the dingy ready.”

“I’ll help.”

They worked together, gathering items for a light picnic and then climbing into the dingy and casting off. Reed used the oars rather than have the sound of the motor puncture the evening stillness. He rowed the short distance to shore, where they beached the vessel and hopped out. Cassie pointed to a spot to the right. “There’s a place up here, it’s not far.”

Reed followed her lead up the beach then through the trees along something she assured him was supposed to be a track. It was close to fifteen minutes before they came upon a lagoon nestled amongst the rocks and palm trees. It was about the size of the average swimming pool, but there was nothing average about the intense cerulean tinge to the water or the outcropping of rocks at one end over which water tumbled, splashing into the lagoon below. With the setting sun painting the sky above them a deep magenta, it looked like everyone’s image of paradise.

“There is limestone in these rocks,” Cassie explained. “That’s why the water looks so blue. And behind the waterfall there is a series of caves you can swim through.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Reed breathed, keeping his voice low out of a sense of reverence. “How come we’re the only ones here?”

“Only the locals know about this place. I think we’ve all tacitly agreed to keep it a secret from the tourists.”

But she’d brought him—a tourist and an outsider—here. It meant more to Reed than he could say. He just hoped Cassie didn’t consider this her parting gift to him.

“It’s a perfect spot for a moonlight picnic. You hungry?”

When Cassie bent over to rummage through the cooler backpack Reed had set on the ground beside him, Reed placed a hand on her back. “Not right now. Can we talk for a bit first?”

Cassie straightened again. The reserve he’d come to expect from the past few days was back in her eyes. “About what?”

“Us.”

“Reed…”

“Hear me out, Cass. Please.”

She crossed her arms over her chest—classic defensive posture. But she didn’t tell him to shut up, that was a bonus. “All right.”

Reed let out the breath he’d been holding. He squeezed Cassie’s shoulder, opened his mouth to speak. No words came out because he had no idea where to start. He released her and turned away, walking the few steps down to the edge of the lagoon and staring into the fathomless blue.

He didn’t hear Cassie come up behind him, and he was so tense that when she spoke he jolted as though from a trance.

“Reed, what is it?”

“You accused me of keeping things from you our entire marriage,” he began at last. “You’re right. I didn’t talk to you about what happened on the job because it can be so ugly sometimes, and I didn’t want you to know how ugly. I didn’t want you to have to deal with it. And I didn’t want you to realize how…demoralized by it all I was on my bad days. I was afraid you’d think I was weak.”

This time it was Cassie who touched his shoulder, a comforting gesture that contrasted with the barely leashed exasperation threading through her words. “How could you have ever thought that?”

“I knew it wasn’t right, but I was afraid of it anyway. You always looked at me so… I don’t know.” He glanced at her standing there beside him. “You looked at me like I was something special. I didn’t want you to realize I was just a regular guy who had days when he struggled to keep it together. I thought you’d wake up and regret you’d given up your whole life for someone who couldn’t live up to the image you had in your mind.”

“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t want an image. I wanted the real you.”

Reed sincerely hoped that was true. “Do you remember that last week—the week before you left?”

She removed her hand from his shoulder, as though the thought of that last week had reminded her he was an enemy, not a friend. She looked out at the lagoon, at the way the rising moonlight danced on the surface. “I remember.”

“I was a complete shit.” He’d known it at the time, that he was behaving like a first-class jerk and that his actions would push her away. He just hadn’t known how far away she’d go. “I was snappy with you when you tried to ask what was wrong. I spent every night out with the guys, and then when I got home I actually expected you to put out.”

“Well, to be fair, I did put out.”

The droll lilt to her response took Reed by surprise. He almost laughed but sobered immediately when he recalled the way she’d looked at him during those encounters—with eyes that pleaded for something, anything more than what he was giving. She’d longed for a connection beyond the physical and at that time he hadn’t been able to provide it. Or he was too chicken shit scared to.

He had to do better than that now. It was his only hope.

“There was a girl. Her name was Mikaela and she was eight when I met her. Early in my career I conducted a welfare check at her house because one of her neighbours had complained that the kids were being mistreated. They were—Christ, were they ever. You should have seen the place, Cass. It wouldn’t have been fit for a dog to live in. And the parents…they were junkies. They hardly even knew they had kids let alone bothered to look after them.”

“That’s terrible,” Cassie said, real sadness in her voice. “Some people aren’t fit to have children.”

“You got that right,” Reed said emphatically. “I worked with the department of community services and we had the children—three of them including Mikaela—removed from their parents’ care. She went into the foster system for a while. Then her mother died and her father signed away parental rights. Last I’d heard, Mikaela had been adopted by a good family.”

“So you helped her,” Cassie prompted.

Reed shook his head. “Over the years I told myself I did. Whenever the system drove me nuts or there was someone I couldn’t help, I remembered Mikaela. I told myself that what I did made a difference. It helped people.”

“It does, Reed.”

“No. It doesn’t.” He turned toward her. His throat ached as he told the story he didn’t want to tell, the one he’d wished time and again wasn’t true. “I found her again. Mikaela. That last week before you left I attended the scene of a body found in an alley. A hooker with a needle in her arm—same old story, right? When we looked into her identity I realized it was the same girl I thought I’d saved from a life of misery. But what I’d done hadn’t made a damn bit of difference. Mikaela died anyway, from an overdose. She became a junkie like her parents.”

“Surely you don’t think that’s your fault? Reed, people make their own choices.”

“It might not be my fault, but nothing I did stopped it. I’m supposed to stop things like that from happening.” Reed scraped a hand over his face and stared up at the darkening sky, as though his lost faith could be found somewhere among the constellations. “What I do is supposed to matter. But it doesn’t. It just doesn’t.”

“That’s not true.” Rising to tip toes, Cassie placed both hands on the side of his face, angling his head down so he was forced to look at her. In the eerie glow reflected off the lagoon, her face was lined by dark shadows, her eyes two glittering spots that mesmerized him. “It matters that you’re willing to try, that you care what happens to people like Mikaela. Maybe you can’t help everyone, you’re not Superman. But you try. That’s important. If good men do nothing, evil wins.”

Reed placed his hands on her hips. His fingers flexed, digging into her flesh. “Do you really think I’m a good man, Cass? Because I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Yes,” she said, and Reed let out a breath of pure relief. “I know you are. I’ve always known.”

She tilted her face and touched her lips to his jaw, once, twice, countless times as she traced the shape of it. She reached his ear and blew a hot breath over it. Everything inside Reed tingled with awareness, with life, as her lips continued to brush against his skin, covering his cheek, his eyelids, his nose, with butterfly kisses. Yet he held perfectly still, afraid to make a move lest she stop what she was doing.

Her breasts brushed his chest and her scent surrounded him, making arousal inevitable. With steely determination, Reed kept his hands on her hips, schooled them not to wander. He didn’t want to be accused of making this all about sex again. Besides, he knew that wasn’t what it
was
about. The gentle benevolence of Cassie’s kisses was an act of absolution that Reed had never dared hope for.

At last she touched her mouth to his. She darted her tongue out to touch his lower lip and Reed opened for her, allowed her inside. Just as he had when he’d told her about Mikaela. As horrible as that was, as much as part of him still wished she didn’t have to know, Cassie’s tender passion told him that he’d done the right thing by confiding in her.

All too soon, the kiss ended. A pang as sharp as grief speared Reed in the chest when Cassie stepped back and turned away. He swallowed his disappointment, thankful that she’d listened to him and supported him. She’d called him a good man and that meant the world to him. He hadn’t realised how dreadfully afraid he’d been this past year that she didn’t think that well of him anymore.

With effort he found his voice. “Cass—”

She put a finger to her lips and shook her head, silencing him. A second later, Reed wouldn’t have been able to talk anyway, because she reached for the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head, revealing a dark-blue bikini top. Next she unzipped her shorts and let them fall to the ground.

She was so stunning. Her body was all supple flesh pulled tight over sturdy muscle. Firm, high breasts, toned stomach and sleek thighs. Reed thought nothing could look better than Cassie Dalton in a bikini—until she reached behind her and pulled at the ties securing the top, causing the scrap of material to fall away.

Cassie turned toward him and, unfazed by her own nudity, drew the bikini bottoms down her legs as well. She stood before him, gloriously naked and so incredible Reed couldn’t breathe. His erection strained painfully in his shorts. The urge to reach for her was mighty, but he was too much in awe to move so much as a muscle.

Without a word, Cassie turned toward the water once more. Then she waded into the liquid blue, dove beneath the surface and disappeared.

Cassie swam the length of the lagoon before she came up for air. She clung to a rock a few feet to the right of the waterfall, breathing heavily. Her heart was pounding out of control, both from the adrenaline of stripping in front of Reed and the sure knowledge that he would follow her into the water. That they would make love this time, not merely have sex.

Her emotions had been stripped raw by Reed’s story. Not merely the details of Mikaela’s sad life, as harrowing as they were. What really devastated Cassie was the desolation she’d heard in Reed’s voice. He’d truly cared about that girl, a girl he hardly knew. A few times over the years, Cassie had cringed at what appeared to be Reed’s cold attitude toward the people he dealt with on the job. Cops had a tendency toward gallows humour that made one question their sensitivity at times.

But tonight the emotion thickening his voice had told her there were deep wells of pain beneath his easy-going surface, a capacity to care about people that caused him real agony. In the face of that knowledge, Cassie knew she wouldn’t be able to keep her own feelings locked safely away if she let her husband into her body. He’d be back in her heart, all the way, for better or worse.

For better or worse. That’s what you signed up for, isn’t it?

Over the din of cascading water, Cassie didn’t hear Reed splash into the lagoon, but her skin tingled with awareness, telling her he was near. She turned to see him standing on a rock on the opposite side of the waterfall, only his shoulders and chest showing above the pool’s surface. His hair was slicked back, his cheekbones two dramatic slashes in his face. In the glow of the moon, he looked like some kind of merman, a God of the deep.

Sexual response made her clit pulse. Despite the water all around her, Cassie’s mouth dried out. She did the breaststroke, gliding into the shallower place behind the waterfall. The rocks there were smooth and flat. The rising moon hit the moving curtain of water, making fluorescent-blue patterns dance on the rock walls.

Reed swam toward her from the other direction just as Cassie found a flat rock, as smooth and dark as polished hematite, and levered herself up onto it. The action brought her out of the water. In the flickering blue light, she could see Reed’s gaze fixed on her dripping wet breasts, their straining, puckered tips. The night air was cool, but Reed’s thorough examination of her nude body made hot shivers course through Cassie. Her blood drummed in her ears. Strangely nervous, impossibly excited, Cassie placed her hands on the rock behind her and parted her thighs.